JOY!

Our house is filled with so much joy these days!!! Isabelle seems to be getting in the Christmas spirit and is just as cute as ever! She is amazing us every day with her new "tricks"...just in the past few weeks she has started to sit up on her own, she's learning to put the pacifier in herself (a wonderful milestone for us, especially at 1 am), and she is more vocal than ever. Not sure if she's a night owl like her mom, but just as we get her ready for bed she becomes more animated and "talkative" (this talk is more like the sound of an injured hawk, as Brian pointed out...somehow we still think it's adorable).

Isabelle's social calendar is much fuller than ours these days. She got to sit on Santa's lap twice (2 very different Santas!). Here she is with the Victorian Santa at Circa. What a doll!
And at the White's Cookies and Milk Party...she seems amused. I have a feeling we'll be telling a different story next year!

A visit with her buddy, Brant Richardson - a rare moment when (almost) 1 year old Brant sat still! How could this happy girl want any more toys for Christmas? Crockett is her favorite toy of all.

Oh yes, we must torture both of our kids with reindeer antlers.

This is how exited Isabelle is about Christmas!

At our playgroup a few weeks ago I think I finally fully understood that Isabelle does actually know I'm her mommy. She is so easily handed off to anybody else that I just figured she was too young to really know who I am. We tried to get all the babies together for a holiday photo and I guess she was not too keen about the idea of being squeezed between 2 boys. The whole time she just stared me down (I was in a crowd of about 12 other mommies trying to snap pictures while staying close enough to be sure their babies wouldn't roll off the couch!) with a look like, "how could you do this to me?!"

(Robert, Isabelle, Joe, Caroline)And about to lose it...

Lost it.

Outa the way, boys!
The girls on the other side look like they're having lots more fun, right?

(Caroline, Ann Carter, Bryant, Emmie) And an update on the cake biz...made a huge wedding cake with a holly leaf design. This wedding cake was baked throughout the city of Charlotte. One of my 3 ovens decided to break on baking day last week. With a total of about 550 servings of cake to bake it was very necessary to have all ovens working, so I sent cake pans full of batter over to 2 other kitchens - my parent's ovens and my in-law's ovens!! Thanks Mom and Elise (and of course my dear husband for running around town)! Mickey Mouse Groom's Cake